CHAPTER VII.
THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE.
THE arrival of the children was an era at Penninghame from which afterwards everything dated; but the immediate result was a very curious and not very comfortable one. As they had been introduced into the house, so they lived in it. Mr. Musgrave never mentioned them, never saw them or appeared to see them, ignored their existence, in short, as completely as if his faculties had been deadened in respect to them. His life was in no way changed indeed; the extraordinary revolution which had been made to every one else in the house by this change showed all the more strongly from the absence of all effect upon him. He read, he wrote, he studied, he took his usual quiet exercise exactly as he did before, and never owned by a word or look that he was conscious of any alteration in the household. For a little while the children were hushed not to make a noise, and huddled away into corners to keep them out of sight and hearing; but that arrangement was too unnatural to continue, and it very soon happened that their presence was forced upon him by unmistakable signs, by both sight and hearing. But the Squire took not the slightest notice. He looked over their heads and never saw them. His ear was engaged with other sounds and he did not hear them. By this system of unconsciousness he deprived himself indeed of some evident advantages; for how can you interfere with the proceedings of those whose very existence you ignore? He could not give orders that the children should make less noise, because he professed not to be aware of their presence; nor send them out of his sight, when he was supposed not to see them; and in consequence this blindness and deafness on his part was perhaps a greater gain to them than to himself. The mental commotion into which he had been thrown by their arrival had never been known to any one but himself. He had a slight illness a few days after—his liver out of order, the doctor said; and so worked off his excitement without disclosing it to any one. After this he resumed his serenity, and completed his heraldic study. The history of the augmentation granted to the Musgraves in the year 1393 in remembrance of the valour of Sir Egidio, or Giles, Musgrave in the Holy Land made rather a sensation among students in that kind. It was a very interesting monograph. Besides being a singularly striking chapter of family history, it was, everybody said, a most interesting contribution to the study of heraldic honours—how and why they were bestowed; especially as concerning “augmentations” bestowed on the field for acts of valour—a rare and exceptional distinction. The Squire made a little collection of the notices that appeared in the newspapers of his “Monograph” pasting them into a pretty little book, as is not unusual with amateur authors. He enjoyed them a great deal more than if he had been the author of a great history, and resented criticism with corresponding bitterness. He was very proud of Egidio, or Giles, who died in the fifteenth century; and it did not occur to him that there was any incongruity between this devotion to his ancestors and the fact that he persisted in ignoring the little boy upstairs.
And yet day by day it grew more hard to ignore him. Mr. Musgrave in his study, after the enthusiasm of his monograph was over, could not help hearing voices which it was difficult to take no notice of. The enthusiasm of composition did a great deal for him: it carried him out of the present; it filled him with a delightful fervour and thrill of intellectual excitement. People who are always writing get used to it, and lose this sense of something fine and great which is the inheritance of the amateur. Even after the shock of renewed intercourse with the son, who had brought shame upon his name, and whom he had cast off, Mr. Musgrave, so long as his work lasted, found himself able to forget everything in the happiness it gave. When he woke in the morning his first thought was of this important occupation which awaited him, and he went to bed with the fumes of his own paragraphs in his head; he was carried away by it. But when all this intellectual commotion was over, and when the ennui of having nothing further to do had swallowed up the satisfaction of having finished a great piece of work, as it so soon does, then there came a very difficult interval for the Squire. He had no longer anything to absorb him and keep him comfortably above the circumstances of ordinary life; and as he sat in his library, only reading, only writing a letter, no longer absorbed by any special study, or by the pride and delight of recording in fine language the results of that study, ordinary life stole back, as it has a way of doing. He began to hear the knocks at the door, the ringing of bells, and to wonder what they meant; to hear steps going up and down the stairs, to be aware of Eastwood in the dining-room, and the rustle of Mary’s dress as she went about the house in the morning, and in the afternoon passed with a soft boom of the swinging door into her favourite hall. The routine of the house came back to the old man. He heard the servants in the kitchen, the ticking of that measured, leisurely old clock in the hall which took about five minutes to spell out the hour. He was not consciously paying any attention to these things. On the contrary, he was secluded from them, rapt in his books, knowing nothing of what was going on; yet he heard them all; and as he sat there through the long winter days and the still longer winter evenings, when there was rain or storm out of doors, and nothing to break the long, still blank of hours within, a sound would come to him now and then, even before the care of the household relaxed—the cry of a little voice, a running and pattering of small feet, sometimes an outburst of laughter, a small voice of weeping, which stirred strangely in the air about him and vaguely called forth old half-extinct sensations, as one might run over the jarred and half-silent keys of an old piano in the dark. This surprised him at first in his loneliness—then, when he had realized what it was, hurt him a little, rousing old wrath and bitterness, so that he would sometimes lay down his pen or close his book and all the past would come before him—the past, in which John his son had disappointed, mocked, insulted, and baffled his father. He would not allow himself to realize the presence of these children in the house, but he could not avoid thinking of the individual who stood between him and them, who was so real while they were so visionary. Always John! He had tried to live for years without thought of him and had been tranquil; it was grievous to be compelled thus to think of him again. This all happened, however, in the seclusion of his own mind, in the quiet of his library, and no one knew anything of it; not his daughter, who thought she knew his looks by heart; nor his servant, who had spelled him out by many guesses in the dark—as servants generally do—and imagined that he had his master at his fingers’ ends. But during all this time while these touches were playing upon him, bringing out ghosts of old sensations, muffled sounds and tones forgotten, Mr. Musgrave publicly ignored the fact that there were any children in the house, and contrived not to see them, nor to hear them, with a force of self-government and resolution which, in a nobler cause, would have been beyond all praise.
The effect of the change upon Miss Musgrave was scarcely less remarkable though very different. Her mental and moral education had been of a very peculiar kind. The tragedy which swallowed up her brother had interrupted the soft flowing current of her young life. All had gone smoothly before in the natural brightness of the beginning. And Mary, who had little passion in her temperament, who was more thoughtful than intense, and whose heart had never been awakened by any strong attachment beyond the ties of nature, had borne the interruption better than most people would have borne it, and had done her duty between her offending brother and her enraged father with less strain and violence of suffering than might have been imagined. And she had got through the more quiet years since without bitterness, with a self-adaptation to the primitive monotony of existence which was much helped, as most such virtues are, by temperament. She had formed her own theory of life, as most people do by the time they reach even the earliest stages of middle age; and this theory was the philosophical one that happiness, or the calm which does duty for happiness in most mature lives, was in reality very independent of events; that it came from within, not from without; and that life was wonderfully equal, neither bringing so much good, nor so much evil, as people of lively imaginations gave it credit for doing. Thus she had herself lived, not unhappy, except at the very crisis of the family life. She had suffered then. Who could hope (she said to herself) to do other than suffer one time or another in their life? But since then the calm and regularity of existence had come back, the routine which charms time away and brings content. There had no doubt been expectations in her mind which had come to nothing—expectations of more active joy, more actual well-being, than had ever fallen to her lot; but these expectations had gradually glided away, and no harm had been done. If she had no intensity of enjoyment, neither had she any wretchedness. She had enough to do; her life was full, and she was fairly happy. So she said to herself; so she had said many a day to Mr. Pen, who shook his mildly melancholy head and dissented—as far as he ever dissented from anything said by Miss Mary. Her brother was lost—away—wandering in the darkness of the great world as in a desert. But if he had been near at hand, absorbed in his married life, his wife, who was not of her species, and his unknown children, would not he have been just as much lost to Mary? So she persuaded herself at least; and so lived tranquilly, happy enough—certainly not unhappy;—and why should an ordinary mortal, youth being over, wish for more?
Now, however, all at once, so great a change had happened to her, that Mary could no longer understand, or even believe in, this state of mind which had been hers for so many years. Perfectly still, tranquil, fearing nothing—when her own flesh and blood were in such warfare in the world! How was it possible? Wondering pangs of self-reproach seized her; mysteries of death and of birth, such as had never touched her maidenly quiet, seemed to surround her, and mock at her former ease. All this time the gates of heaven had been opening and shutting to John. Hope sometimes, sometimes despair, love, anguish, want, pain, had struggled for him, while she had sat and looked on so calmly, and reasoned so placidly about the general equality of life. How could she have done it? The revelation was as painful as it was overwhelming. Nature seized upon her with a grip of iron, and avenged upon her in a moment all the indifferences of her previous life. The appeal of these frightened children, the solemn charge laid upon her by her brother, awoke her with a start and shiver. How had she dared to sit and look through calm windows, or on the threshold by her tranquil door, upon the struggles, pangs, and labours of the other human creatures about her? Was it excuse enough that she was neither wife nor mother? had she therefore nothing to do in guarding, and continuing, and handing down the nobler successions of life? Mary was startled altogether out of the state of mind habitual to her. Instead of remaining the calm lady of the manor, the female Squire, the lawgiver of the village which she had hitherto been—a little above the problems that were brought to her, a little wanting in consideration of motives and meaning, perhaps now and then too decided in her judgment, seeing the distinction between right and wrong too clearly, and entertaining a supreme, though gentle contempt for the trimmings and compromises, as well as for the fusses and agitations of the ordinary world—she felt herself to have plunged all at once into the midst of those agitations at a single step. She became anxious, timorous, yet rash, faltering even in opinion, hesitating, vacillating—she who had been so decided and so calm. Her feelings were all intensified, the cords of her nature tightened, as it were, vibrating to the lightest touch. And at the same time, which was strange enough, while thus the little circle, in which she stood, became full of such intense, unthought-of interest, the world widened around her as it had never widened before; into darknesses and silences indeed—but still with an extended horizon which expanded her heart. John was there in the wide unknown, which stretched round this one warm, lighted spot, wandering she knew not where, a solitary man. She had never realized him so before; and not only John, but thousands like him, strangers, wanderers, strugglers with fate. This sudden breath of novelty, of enlightenment, expanded her heart like a sob. Her composure, her satisfaction, her tranquillity fled from her; but how much greater, more real and true, more penetrating and actual, became her existence and the world! And all this was produced, not by any great mental enlightenment, any sudden development of character, but by the simple fact that two small helpless creatures had been put into her hands and made absolutely dependent upon her. This was all; but the whole world could not have been more to Mary. It changed her in every way. She who had been so rooted in her place, so absorbed in her occupations, would have relinquished all, had it been necessary, and gone out solitary into the world for the children. Could there be any office so important, any trust so precious? This, which sounded like the vulgarest commonplace, and at the same time most fictitious high-flown sentiment, on the lips of Mrs. Pennithorne, became all at once, in a moment, the leading principle of Miss Musgrave’s life.
But she had to undergo various petty inconveniences from the curiosity of her neighbours, and their anxiety to advise her as to what she should do in the “trying circumstances.” What could she know about children? Mrs. Pen, for one, thought it very important to give Miss Musgrave the benefit of her advice. She made a solemn visit to inspect them, and tell her what she ought to do. The little boy, she felt sure, was delicate, and would require a great deal of care; but the thing that troubled Mrs. Pennithorne the most was that Miss Musgrave could not be persuaded to put on mourning for her brother’s wife. Notwithstanding that it was, as Mary pleaded, five years since she died, the vicar’s wife thought that crape would be a proof that all “misunderstandings” were over, and would show a Christian feeling. And when she could not make this apparent to the person principally concerned, she did all she could to impress it upon her husband, whom she implored to “speak to”—both father and daughter—on the subject. Most people would have been all the more particular to put on crape, and to wear it deep, because there had been “misunderstandings.” “Misunderstandings!” cried Mr. Pen. It was not, however, he who spoke to Miss Musgrave, but she who spoke to him on this important subject; and what she said somewhat bewildered the vicar, who could not fathom her mind in this respect.
“Emily thinks we should put on mourning,” she said. “And, do you know, I really believe that is the reason that poor John is so much more in my thoughts?”
“What—the mourning?” the vicar asked faltering.
“Her death. Hitherto the idea of one has been mingled with that of the other. Now he is just John; everything else has melted away; there is nothing but himself to think of. He has never been only John before. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Pen?”
The vicar shook his head. He wondered if this could be a touch of feminine jealousy, knowing that even Mary was not perfect; and this gave him a momentary pang.
“I don’t suppose that I should feel so;—I was very fond of John—but I, of course, could not be jealous—I mean of his love for one unworthy—— ”
“How do you know even that she was unworthy? It is not that, Mr. Pen. But she was nothing to us, and confused him in our minds. Now he is himself—and where is he?” said Miss Musgrave, with tears in her eyes.
“In God’s hands—in God’s hands, Miss Mary! and God bless him wherever he is—and I humbly beg your pardon,” cried Mr. Pen, with an excess of compunction which she scarcely understood. His feelings were almost too warm Mary thought.
And as the news got spread through those invisible channels which convey reports all over a country, many were the visitors that came to the Castle to see what the story meant, though they did not announce this as the object of their visit. Among these visitors the most important was Lady Stanton, who had been Mary’s rival in beauty when the days were. They had not been rivals indeed to their own consciousness, but warm friends, in their youth and day of triumph; but events had separated the two girls, and the two women rarely met, and had outgrown all acquaintance; for Lady Stanton had been involved, almost more immediately than Mary Musgrave, in the tragedy which had so changed life at Penninghame, and this had changed their relations like everything else. This lady arrived one day to the great surprise of everybody, and came in with timid eagerness and haste, growing red and growing pale as she held out her hands to her old friend.
“We never quarrelled,” she said; “why should we never see each other? Is there any reason?”
“No reason,” said Miss Musgrave, making room upon the sofa beside her. But such an unexpected appeal agitated her, and for the moment she could not satisfy herself as to the object of the visit. Lady Stanton, however, was of a very simple mind, and could not conceal what that object was.
“Oh, Mary,” she said, the tears coming into her eyes, “I heard that John’s children had come home. Is it true? You know I always took an interest—— ” And here she stopped, making a gulp of some emotion which, to a superficial spectator, might have seemed out of place in Sir Henry Stanton’s wife. She had grown stout, but that does not blunt the feelings. “I should like to see them,” she said, with an appeal in her eyes which few people could withstand. And Mary was touched too, partly by this sudden renewal of an old love, partly by the thought of all that had happened since she last sat by her old companion’s side, who was a Mary too.
“I cannot bring them here,” she said, “but I will take you to the hall to see them. My father likes them to be kept—in their own part of the house.”
“Oh, I hope he is kind to them!” said Lady Stanton, clasping her white dimpled hands. “Are they like your family? I hope they are like the Musgraves. But likenesses are so strange—mine are not like me,” said the old beauty, plaintively. Perhaps the trouble in her face was less on account of her own private trials in this respect than out of alarm lest John Musgrave’s children should bear the likeness of another face of which she could not think with kindness. There was so little disguise in her mind, that this sentiment also found its way into words. “Oh Mary,” she cried, “you and I were once the two beauties, and everybody was at our feet; but that common girl was more thought of than either you or me.”
“Hush!” said Mary Musgrave, putting up her hand; “she is dead.”
“Is she dead?” Lady Stanton was struck with a momentary horror; for it was a contemporary of whom they were speaking, and she could not but be conscious of a little shiver in her own well-developed person, to think of the other who was clay. “That is why they have come home?” she said, half under her breath.
“Yes; and because he cannot carry them about with him wherever he goes.”
“You have heard from him, Mary? I hope he is doing well. I hope he is not—very—heart-broken. If you are writing you might say I inquired. He might like to know that he was remembered; and you know I always took—an interest—— ”
“I know you always had the kindest heart.”
“I always took an interest, notwithstanding everything; and—will he come home? Now surely he might come home. It is so long ago; and surely now no one would interfere.”
“I cannot say anything about that, for I don’t know,” said Miss Musgrave; “he does not say. Will you come and see the children, Lady Stanton?”
“Oh, Mary, what have I done that you should call me Lady Stanton? I have never wished to stand aloof. It has not been my doing. Do you remember what friends we were? and I couldn’t call you Miss Musgrave if I tried. When I heard of the children I thought this was an opening,” said Lady Stanton, faltering a little. She told her little fib, which was an innocent one; but she was true at bottom and told it ill; and what difference did it make whether she sought the children for Mary’s sake, or Mary for the children’s? Miss Musgrave accepted her proffered embrace with kindness, yet with a smile. She was touched by the emotion of her old friend, and by the remnants of that “interest” which had survived fifteen years of married life, and much increase of substance. Perhaps a harsher judge might have thought the emotion slightly improper. But poor John had got but hard measure in the world; and a little compensating faithfulness was a salve to his sister’s feelings. She led her visitor downstairs and through the narrow passage, in all her wealth of silk and amplitude of shadow. Mary herself was still as slim as when they had skimmed about these passages together; and she was Mary still; for once in a way she felt herself not without some advantage over Sir Henry’s wife.
Nello was standing full in the light when the ladies went into the hall, and he it was who came forward to be caressed by the pretty lady, who took to him all the more warmly that she had no boys of her own. Lady Stanton fairly cried over his fair head, with its soft curls. “What a little Musgrave he is!” she cried; “how like his father! I cannot help being glad he is like his father.” But when this vision of splendour and beauty, which Lilias came forward to admire, saw the little girl, she turned from her with a slight shiver. “Ah!” she cried, retreating, “is that—the little girl?” And the sight silenced her, and drove her away.